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Tories breaking law over spending cuts secrecy, say lawyers

Legal opinion argues the parliamentary budget officer has the right to see budget details kept under wraps by the Conservatives.

Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page says MPs and Canadians are being kept in the dark about the extent of the Conservatives' budget cuts.
(Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo)

By Bruce Campion-SmithOttawa Bureau chief

Mon., June 18, 2012

OTTAWA—Dozens of federal departments are breaking the law by refusing to provide details of the government’s spending cuts to a parliamentary watchdog, a new legal opinion charges.

And now Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page is warning the dispute could wind up in Federal Court unless the Conservatives cough up the information he’s after.

The dispute is shaping up as the most serious in a series of showdowns between the Conservatives and the budget officer, the very job they created in a bid to get “objective analysis” of federal finances.

Opposition MPs jumped on the findings Monday, accusing the Conservatives of deliberately trying to keep Canadians in the dark about the true impact of sweeping budget reductions.

“Once again the Conservatives are trying to hide the truth about their Trojan Horse budget,” NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair said in the Commons.

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“By hiding this information, the Conservatives are knowingly violating the law,” he said.

The man who has raised Conservative ire over his examinations into spending on their law-and-order agenda and F-35 fighter jet program has been struggling to probe the Conservatives’ plans to balance the budget.

But when he wrote 82 federal departments and agencies seeking additional data, only 18 responded. Wayne Wouters, clerk of the Privy Council — the top bureaucrat — wrote Page expressing concerns about providing the information.

But the legal opinion released Monday says the Tories have run afoul of the Parliament of Canada Act by stonewalling Page.

The opinion was written by Joseph Magnet, a constitutional lawyer and professor at the University of Ottawa, and Tolga Yalkin, a lawyer and professor, who also works in the budget office.

The lawyers argue that under the act, deputy ministers are required to provide “free and timely access to financial or economic data” to the parliamentary budget officer.

“No legal exception to this requirement has been advanced and none appears from the analysis of the correspondence exchanged,” they write.

“Accordingly, the non-compliant departments have statutory obligations to provide the information.”

Page says MPs and ultimately Canadians are being kept in the dark about the extent of the budget cuts.

“Right now there is absolutely no accountability because there is no transparency,” Page said in an interview

“There’s nothing the opposition, even government members, could do to hold the executives to account because we just don’t know.”

He’s hoping the legal opinion will convince the government to open up and avoid a court showdown to pry loose the budget data.

“The information should have been provided as requested and both your department and the other departments that have not complied are in violation of the legal obligations under the (Parliament of Canada) Act,” Page wrote in a letter to Wouters.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, who fielded questions on the topic in the Commons, gave little suggestion the government would back down.

“We will continue to report to Parliament through the normal means, whether through the estimates, the supplementary estimates, public accounts, or quarterly reports,” said Baird, leaving Page conspicuously absent from his list.

Page said his last recourse is go to Federal Court to seek disclosure of the information though he added that “nobody wins” under that scenario.

“That said, we have to draw a line in the sand with respect to the Act of the Parliament and the provision of information,” he said.

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